Then why did she experience the same rush now? Why did she realize that her cheeks were warm and it had nothing to do with the Louisiana sun moving slowly across the sky?

“Because you’re an idiot,” she told herself as she settled behind the wheel. She didn’t have time for schoolgirl fantasies, not when Selma’s daughters were missing. “Get it together.” She jabbed her key in the ignition. As her little car started, she forced herself to concentrate on the importance of meeting with Jase. They had to find Zoe and Chloe. And in the process, she believed that they would prove that Donovan Caldwell was not the 21 Killer.

In the hours before she was to meet Jase, she needed to gather and copy her notes, make a few phone calls, and emotionally gird herself. She’d already discovered dealing with Jase was complicated. Not only was she fighting her attraction to him, but there was something else going on between them, something she didn’t understand, an underlying tension that she couldn’t pinpoint.

Was he interested in her?

Or was it something else, something a little darker?

As she checked her mirror and nosed her Honda into traffic, she noticed a parking enforcement officer turning down the street. Well, maybe it was a good omen that she’d narrowly escaped getting a parking ticket. Maybe her luck was changing. Maybe today was the day Selma’s daughters would be found.

Or maybe not.

Maybe the girls would never be located.

“Don’t even go there,” she warned, glancing into the rearview mirror.

When her phone rang again, she saw Tanisha’s number and promised herself that she would return the call the second she got home. And Milo’s, too. And she would check in on Selma. Yeah, she didn’t have a lot of time before she met up with Jase again.

At that thought, she actually smiled.

“Wait. What?” Bentz said, his cell phone pressed to his ear. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing from Hayes, who’d called him from California.

Donovan Caldwell was dead?

No! Not at the very moment Bentz was starting to believe he might be innocent of the murders of his sisters and wrongly convicted of being the 21 Killer.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No joke.” The tone of Hayes’s voice was flat, all business.

“But he’s locked up.”

Montoya, cutting through an alley, shot Bentz a look.

“I know,” Hayes agreed. “Housed in a private cell. Well, at least it’s been private for a few days. There was room for another inmate, of course, but his most recent cell mate was released a couple of days ago and for some reason, some red-tape clusterfuck I think, the other bed was unoccupied. Despite all the prison overcrowding. So the past few nights, Caldwell’s had the cell to himself.”